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Sunday, August 30, 2015

As the summer comes to an end and school gets ready to start we've been doing lots of organization around our home. We partnered with Birch Lane and added a new piece of furniture to our entryway to store all their school papers and then we added several new baskets throughout the house. We added these two woven storage ones in the small size to the end of our couch right next to our kitchen table and they are filled with lots of the girls arts supplies. This helps keep things handy seeing how they do all of their drawing, coloring and now homework right there. I love how sturdy and well made they are. And I like that by stacking two of them it also functions as a place to place things on when you are sitting on we couch.

These burlap covered boxes come in sets of two so we have been using the smaller one in our family room to store remotes and some magazines. (You can see the larger one in our entryway). I love the texture the box adds in this room.

Another project we tackled was cleaning out the hallway closet and getting things organized better in here. I will have a more detailed post later this week but wanted to share these handled storage baskets we added. We went with the small size. The girls each have their own to keep their shoes in and it has been working so much better than the system we had before. I love the braided handles on these and how incredibly well made they are!

We also added a table clock to our master bedroom. That doesn't have anything to do with organization but I am hoping it will help keep us on time in the morning now that summer is over. Ha! I can't see practically anything without my contacts in, but thanks to the size of this clock I love being able to wake up and look over and actually see the time without putting my glasses on.

And the last room we added some baskets too was our den. We added this huge round handled basket to one side of the sofa. It such a great place to keep all sorts of miscellaneous stuff and than add a few blankets on top.

We are so grateful to have the opportunity to work with Birch Lane. We have been so thrilled with the quality of every single piece we have gotten from them and love that they offer FREE shipping on all orders over $49 INCLUDING furniture!

We hope you all have a fabulous week ahead!

*Items were provided by Birch Lane in exchange for writing a blog post.

Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The girls have been really into baking the last several months and have been begging to do a cupcake and lemonade stand all summer. We originally were just planning on using our folding table but Lola was convinced "we should at least TRY to build something". I told them if we had enough scrap wood in the garage then we could. And lucky for them we had just about all we needed to make one. This isn't really a tutorial seeing how this was more of a makeshift project that we made up as we went along but here are a few quick cell phone images so you can see the general idea of how we constructed it.

We used two pieces of plywood for the two sides and then used two pieces leftover from when we built our dining room table for the top. I used our Kreg jig to make some pocket holes and then laid the top pieces on the ground and held the side up above it and drilled them in and then flipped it upright. After that I added a little piece across the bottom and top (right underneath the actual top boards) so that we would have a way to attach the front pieces.

We didn't have enough pieces for the front so we did have to go purchase some wood for this part but we liked the idea of doing alternating pink and white pieces like a drawing we had seen on Ana White's website (if we had started from scratch and not used our scrap wood we would have used her tutorial) and this turned out to be my favorite part!

The girls painted the boards and the sides of the stand while I stained the top pieces and then I just screwed the pink and white boards on and then added the top part to hold the sign and that was it for the building part. It's definitely far from perfect but it's nice and sturdy.

We used the banner from their bedroom to add some fun color and one of our old lemonade signs that we used to sell in our shop. And then the girls spend two days baking pumpkin bread, brownies and lots of cupcakes to get ready for their stand. They were so excited. They did all the baking themselves (except the oven of course), and I squirted out the icing while they did the sprinkles (they actually often do that part themselves but we were on a bit of a time crunch that day). They have had so much fun doing it. They set it up four different times last week and have gone through almost four dozen cupcakes - ha!

Monday, August 24, 2015

We are so thrilled to be partnering with one of our favorite shops, Painted Fox! Their website is loaded with all sorts of farmhouse style home furnishings and accessories and their customer service is amazing! We are curating a permanent collection with them and will be continually adding items. And guess what - from now through September 4th if you use the code DEARLILLIE you can get 15% off the entire collection.

Friday, August 21, 2015

As we get ready for the girls to head back to school we've been doing lots and lots of organization around here. We've been cleaning out closets and baskets and all sorts of storage places to get them ready for the new school year. One of the spaces we worked on making a little more functional for us this past weekend was our entryway. We received this gorgeous Wetherly Cabinet from Birch Lane and I have to say I am THRILLED with it. It is beautifully built and so functional. The top drawer is for Lillie and the bottom for Lola. Right now we have their school supplies in them, but once school starts the plan is to keep all of their papers and things that come home with them each day organized in each of their drawers. Because it's actually a filing cabinet it can hold folders so I will probably use about 1/4 of each drawer with folders to keep their different paperwork organized and easy to find and then will use the other 3/4 as more of a regular drawer to store all the miscellaneous items that they seem to acquire about a week into the school year. =) I get so happy when we find a piece that is so pretty and so practical and helps me stay organized! And one of the best parts about ordering from Birch Lane - they offer FREE shipping on all orders over $49 - even furniture! And their customer service is wonderful. We've added several pieces from them to our new home including the rug in our family room and the pendants in our kitchen!

We also added this adorable retriever bookend (and the other one is in our den - I'll share pictures of that soon) that I love, along with a beautiful burlap covered box to help store things as well. I love the nailhead trim on the box. It comes in a set of two and the other one is in our family room and we are using it to store our remotes.

That's it for today's post. We've got some more fun posts coming this next week including details on our curated sale, a cupcake stand the girls and I built, and another fun storage and organization post with Birch Lane! I hope you all have a fabulous weekend and here is the source list for this space: